What makes you moral- your actions, thoughts, based on free will or punishment? Lets forget about all of the possible interpretations of what morality is and keep this simple. I'm going to use the always popular 10 commandments (
Wiki link ) for this discussion but acknowledge that it is not the only standard out there. There could be more examples such as
"you die, it's all over, so who gives a shit." But I'd like to stick to my two examples below.
Example 1- You live on the Earth, there is a giant camera in the sky (GOD) that records every action you take in your life. God has given you a standard, the 10 commandments and a warning of punishment, if you don't do what I say, or believe how I tell you to believe you will be punished for all eternity. You live your life, follow all the rules because you don't want to burn in hell and upon your passing to the spiritual plane arrive at the gates of Heaven. You get an "A" (using the grading scaled A-F) from God. Party time! Where are the virgins?
Exampe 2- you are given an opportunity to live your life, discover your strengths and weaknesses, learn lessons, and make moral choices, hurt or help others based on free will. When you die, you arrive at the spiritual evaluation committee (or God if you prefer) who grades you based on your past life and hands it to you for self reflection until you move on to the next test.
Which situation gives you a better opportunity to be moral? In example one, if you follow all of the "rules", does this make you moral -OR- does it only indicate you are an excellent rule follower?
More importantly do you think an all powerful, all wise god would really judge people based on example number 1? What kind of morality do you really have if all of peoples' actions on this Earth are based on punishment? I just don't see Example 1 as a worthy standard for God to judge people on.